Back in 1853, when visionary Victor Theodor of Sweden’s ever-entrepreneurial Engwall family started roasting coffee in Gävle, the capital of Gävleborg County, they didn’t have keyboards with that creepy, eyebrowed-version of the letter ä on them (it’s äctually cälled umläut ä) so, as this story goes, Vic used the unaccented, Latin spelling of the town’s name and presto: Gevalia Kaffe was born!

The antique map shown below illustrates the route that wooden sailing ships of the day might have taken to transport Gevalia Kaffe to Bermuda (still chuffed at the time about her shiny new-ish lighthouse on Gibb’s Hill.)

Fast forward to today and you don’t have to wait for tide nor tempest nor Gevalia to order securely 24/7 from the Convenience Coffee warehouse on Harvey Road in Paget and have your order delivered ABSOLUTELY FREE weekdays to your office, shop or home anywhere in Bermuda (the delivery is free — not the coffee.)

• shop now for Gevalia K-Cups for Keurig brewers, and
• Gevalia T-Discs for Tassimo Pro office brewers

Four more things you probably didn’t know about Gevalia, Gävle and Swedes:

1. Unlike another very famous Swedish brand, the exquisitely tasty Gevalia K-Cups and Tassimo Pro T-Discs require no assembly! Just “click, brew and enjoy” like almost everything Convenience Coffee distributes to offices, homes and retailers all over Bermuda.

2. Gevalia’s hometown, Gävle is almost as famous for its Yule Goat, shown above. As that story goes, in December, 1966, a caffeinated group of community-minded Gävlenians (who ride their bicycles in the snow) decided to construct a 40-foot tall bearded, straw goat with red-ribbon-wrapped horns (no, they are not dreads.)

Since then, unfortunately not quite as predictably, some nearby not-so-ribbon-or-reggae-or-goat-loving vandals (maybe from Backa town…Yes! it’s a real place near Gävle) find the poor thing and burn it to the ground: every. single. year! Here’s the head to tail video story from the BBC‘s Dara O Briain.

3. Gevalia Kaffe’s TV ad man, Johan, calls the brand, “a rich, Swedish tastebud massage.”

Fact check:

• He’s not Swedish. He hails from the same town as Google’s HQ: Mountain View, California.
• His name is not Johan: It’s actually John Prescott Metcalf.
• And the jury’s out on whether or not he’s hot. See for yourself in the Gevalia YouTube grocery store aisle commercial in which they also say that people prefer Gevalia over Starbucks House Blend.
• We think if you’re not already a Gevalia Kaffe fan, you should try some for your Keurig brewer or your Tassimo Pro brewer (once you’re finished watching all the Gevalia TV commercials on YouTube). Email Kevin or Herwig at sales@www.new.coco.bm and we’ll happily send you a few samples in your next order.

4. Gevalia says that Swedes drink more coffee per capita than almost anyone else in the world.

Fact check:

Truth be told, it’s actually the Finns who drink the most (9.6 kg per capita per year or about 3 cups a day) but we can probably all agree that Swedes know how to put things together, and that’s what they’ve done with this page of do-it-yourself iced and flavoured coffee ideas and mouth-watering recipes for breakfasts to soups, salads, appetizers, entrees, desserts and pairings.

We stock lots of  “Swedish taste bud massages” here at Convenience Coffee in Keurig K-Cups Tassimo Pro T-Discs:

1. K-Cup Colombia
2. K-Cup Dark Royal Roast
3. K-Cup Signature Blend
4. Tassimo Pro 100% Colombian
5. Tassimo Pro Breakfast Blend
6. Tassimo Pro Dark Roast
7. Tassimo Pro Decaf
8. Tassimo Pro Espresso
9. Tassimo Pro French Vanilla
10. Tassimo Pro Signature Blend
11. Tassimo Pro Swiss Hazelnut

Brew News Gevalia story sources and image attribution notes:

• Here’s how we determined how to begin a letter in Swedish so that we could Photoshop the typewriter photo by Dung Anh at Unsplash which didn’t originally say, “Hej kara Bermuda.”
• Google suggested it was okay license-wise, to use the Gävle goat from this Daily Beast story by Nina Strochlic.
• We took a chance on the Finnish caffeine stats in the worldatlas.com article because to use the Caffeine Informer story it was based on would have been measurably less entertaining and the 2013 Euromonitor report that the latter was based on was even more so — to the point of being mind-numbingly boring.
• Wikimedia Commons believes the antique map image, “Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica Ac Hydrographica Tabula” shown above is in the public domain.